Colour can express a number of emotions, and when paired well with a brands personality, can heighten the emotion connected to a brand.

Huh?

Go back to when you were at school. You’re in English class, bored out of your mind when the teacher asks you the most annoying question:

“Why has the author used the colour blue for the curtains that framed the ‘dreary’ outside world?”.

One of your classmates will answer:

“Cos she wanted to”, in an effort to annoy the teacher.

Another will say:

“Because blue is a sad colour. Blue emotes calmness, and in this context, it also brings a sense of gloom. She used blue to subtly express the dull mood, the same reason she chose to describe the weather as dreary”.

Of course, the latter would gain a higher grade.

It’s a similar process when using colour in marketing. Blue can show calmness, red can show intensity. With this said, what this doesn’t mean is that blue, for example, will make your brand be seen as solely calm or sad.

Why use colour psychology in marketing?

There are benefits to understanding the psychology of colour when marketing your brand.

Consider this:

Would you hire a lawyer from a firm with a colour palette that’s bright and childish? Us neither.

Your brand will have some kind of personality or identity. However, colour isn’t going to emote your brand’s personality alone, it needs to be used alongside other marketing techniques.

It helps to feed your audience with small hints to tap into their subconscious minds – although, it should be noted that we’re not saying to trick your audience into feeling a specific emotion.

You just want to expand on the feeling you want your audience to relate your brand to.

As with the use of blue for the English question, it can mean a number of things. What determines the meaning is down to the context in which it’s used.

In other words, we’ve seen that blue can show sadness and calmness, but if you saw a blue logo for a Digital Marketing company (like ours), you would see it as professional, friendly and smart rather than sad and calm.

Why is this?

Because our logo isn’t simply a block of blue. It’s a bulldog’s face – it’s friendly yet smart. So, the colour blue encourages the professional yet friendly character that we want to emit.

Using the right colour to market your brand

Your brand’s personality should express the way you want your audience to view your business. That could be friendly or serious, it very much depends on what your business does.

Going back to our previous example; a law firm wouldn’t brand their business with a bright yellow theme and a cheerful personality. This would not suit their industry.

It would be ill-fitted. And at times of seriousness, colours like grey, black, brown and white express the sense of sincerity that you’d expect from a law firm.

Pairing a colour with your brand’s personality is how to use colour effectively in marketing.

Using colour in other elements of marketing

So, we’ve learnt why colour psychology is useful for your brand’s identity, but how else can we use colour for marketing?

Tell us what you think in the comments below. Does the same apply to your website colour palette, your infographics or your display ad?